Matter of Trust - polling on public views of charities for New Philanthropy Capital

Matter of Trust– Ipsos’s poll on public views of charities for New Philanthropy Capital

Polling recently conducted by Ipsos for New Philanthropy Capital shows that the public have mixed views about how trustworthy charities are, and their trust in them is often shaped by their perception of what a typical charity is and the behaviour it exhibits.

• Overall, half (51%) claim to know a great deal or a fair amount about charities, and a similar percentage (45%) claims not to know very much or nothing at all.
• When asked to rate how much trust they have in charities on a scale of 0-10, respondents gave a mean score of 5.88 out of 10. Around a third (36%) give a score between 0-5, and 23% give a score between 8-10.
• When thinking about charities generally, two thirds (67%) think of large organisations, and a quarter (25%) think of small organisations. However, only a quarter (25%) would be more likely to donate to large organisations, with three fifths (59%) who would be more likely to donate to smaller ones.
• The public say they would be most likely to donate to local charities (40%) as opposed to national (30%) and international (14%) ones.
• The public claim to be more likely to donate to charities that are run by volunteers and provide services to people (66% and 70%) as opposed to those which are run by professionals or focus on raising awareness of issues (18% and 14%)
• The way that charities are perceived impacts on trust, with those who think of charities which don’t get involved in politics and are volunteer-led more likely to have higher levels of trust (29% and 28% respectively compared with 22% overall.

Ipsos conducted 1,009 online interviews with adults aged 16-75 across Great Britain between 10th and 14th October 2014. Data are weighted to the profile of the population.

Further analysis is available on the NPC page which can be found here.

• Download the topline results
• Download the data tables